As you probably know because I have been writing about this before, getting the research institutionalized has been more difficult than anticipated. Although we ran a great crowdfunding campaign with my colleagues of Tilburg university funds, and I worked together satisfactorily with the Wetenschapsknooppunt Brabant and INTERVICT Institute, there was no possibility at Tilburg University to use the money I raised to work as a PhD student, or even to use the money for research purposes.

I then applied at the ISS in the Hague (which falls under Erasmus University). After an intense selection process I was very proud and happy to be allowed to enter their PhD program. However, they had one condition: that I would work with two internal ISS supervisors and therefore not with prof. Rianne Letschert anymore, who has been my supervisor from the beginning. Which is something I really did not want because I love working with prof. Letschert. She is very good, sharp, intelligent, she teaches me so much, and she supports me and the project even if I make difficult choices such as doing crowdfunding or going to a war-affected area to do field research.

So for a while I did not know what to do next, and we were talking to universities abroad to perhaps set up a construction of cooperation – but then, Prof. Letschert got a phonecall and one day I’m in her office and she tells me she will be the new rector magnificus of Maastricht University!! (Incidentally, thereby becoming the youngest female rector magnificus in the Netherlands EVER). So cool.

So then we started talking to Maastricht and see if I could move my research project there. Last monday I had a last meeting on this and it looks like it all is working out!!! I can hardly believe it. So after 1,5 year after we started the crowdfunding it looks like finally this month I will receive my first scholarship allowance and an allowance for research expenses. The people in Maastricht so far have been extremely friendly, cooperative and enthusiastic about the project. With the head of the fundraising and alumni department I have already cooked up some fundraising plans for the future, and the people at the law faculty have been most supportive in figuring out the best way to work with past and future financial constructions.

All in all I am super happy that FINALLY this thing has been solved and I am moving the project to an inspiring and positive environment where I think it can prosper (of course, still depending on my hard work and quality of the research – which is yet another thing I will post about again soon :-)).